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Romesh Chandra is no more - The World Peace Movement in grief!

The World Peace Council (WPC) is in the sad position to anounce the passing away of our veteran leader and President of Honor Romesh Chandra today in Mumbai. Late comrade Romesh passed away in the age of 97, having served decades long the peace movement in India and the world.
Romesh Chandra was born on March 30th, 1919, in Lyallpur, India. He received degrees from a university in Lahore and from Cambridge University. From 1934 to 1941 he was chairman of the Students’ Union in Lahore. He became a member of the Communist Party of India (CPI) in 1939, of the Central Committee of the CPI in 1952, of the National Council of the CPI in 1958, and of the Central Executive Committee in 1958; from 1963 to 1967 he was a member of the Central Secretariat of the National Council of the CPI. From 1963 to 1966, Chandra was editor of the central organ of the CPI, New Age.

He served as General Secretary of the All-India Peace Council from 1952 to 1963. In 1953 he joined the World Peace Council, and in 1966 he became the WPC’s General Secretary and a member of its presidium while in 1977 he was elected President of the WPC. During the Assembly of WPC in Athens in 2000 Romesh Chandra contributed decisively to the preservation of the anti-imperialist character of the WPC and got elected President of Honour.

He served and contributed to the struggle of the peoples and their just causes and championed in the solidarity movement with the peoples under dictatorial regimes, for the liberation and self-determination of the peoples in dozens of cases all over the world.

Romesh Chandra was awarded the F. Joliot-Curie Gold Peace Medal in 1964. He received the International Lenin Prize for Strengthening Peace among Nations in 1968, and he was awarded the Order of Friendship of Peoples in 1975 by the USSR.

Romesh Chandra was a genuine son and figure of the Indian working-class movement and one of the leaders of the world peace movement. He was an example of an Internationalist who never compromised his revolutionary identity and values.

For all fellow fighters for peace and social justice, who had the privilege to meet and work with him in the long, hard but beautiful struggle for a world free from imperialist domination, he will be remembered as an outstanding figure and leader of the World Peace Movement.

The WPC had the opportunity to visit late comrade Romesh in Mumbai in 2014, where Romesh met his second family again and for the last time.

The WPC conveys its condolences to his family, to his party and to the All India Peace and Solidarity Organisation (AIPSO).